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I have a couple of fairly expensive modems that won't work under Damn Small Linux, unless you remaster, to add wvdial. One is a pcmcia modem that was nearly $230.00, and the other an ISA modem that was $80.00.
I suppose they started with a base notebook computer that had a winmodem built in, not removeable, so they were stuck with it.

damnsmallinux.org

Move your life towards simplicity!

XFree86 project was scuicided and this is what happens. :) Personally, any change for the better including new implementations and speed enhancements will do everyone good.

Speaking of which, this is off topic, but has anyone gone x.org for their own machines and if so, what's the smallest compiled binaries sizes (total X install) you've come up with? I'm looking at working with DamnSmallLinux and the smaller the better, or straight out integration (unless that's pure evil)

Post some replys, I'd love to hear from everyone.

Then avoid bloated multi-library dependent C++ GUIs.

To me the ultimate example of this is Damnsmall Linux, nothing but lean and mean apps!

If a computer is 10x more powerful then it was 7 years ago it should be doing 10x the amount of work, instead we get more and more eye candy.

Here's a "mini-HOWTO" that I found via google. I didn't read the whole thing, but it looks informative. Wikipedia's Ramdisk entry had links to two stripped down knoppix distros that could be loaded into a ramdisk - Damn Small Linux (50 mb), and Feather Linux (64 mb). I've never done anything with ramdisks (I'm a linux newbie, too) but they do sound pretty neat.

If you're looking for small and simple, I've found that Damn Small Linux is excellent. It provides a simple, small linux distro that'll fit on one of those little business card cd-rs. It's running fluxbox as a windows manager and includes a whole slew of applications in 50MB of space. Check out the website.

and getting after market RAM sticks is extremely cost prohibitive, and a lot of these older machines take very precise sticks

God, Zogger... wish I'd known. I just sold a 8 lb box of 486/PI/II ram - a lot from prop machines like IBMs and gateways - on ebay. If I'd known you were looking I'd have just shipped it to you (didn't get enough money to pay for my time, only about fifty bucks)

Hey, man, don't feel bad. Before I moved I had tons of old equipment around, and that's how I learned to do stuff. Think of it as an education - in frustration - which is often the best teacher *grin* but seriously, sometimes just doing install after install on various machines is the best way to learn it. I'm biased - that's how I did it - but hey :)

That said, for a lot of older systems, you might try Damn Small Linux - which I use on my 486 laptop and which works quite well. It's a massively shrunken (50 mb image) version of Knoppix which is geared for min memory and cpu - and still has the hardware autodetect. Works pretty well (just doesn't update well, it's a mix of Debian stable, unstable and testing - so one has to be careful :) (see below)

You don't need a CDrom, either - if you can get the 50mb image on the hard drive, even if it's in a DOS partition, you can boot it from a DSL boot floppy, or with tomsrblt you can boot it over NFS if the network card is supported (takes a little tweaking tho in some configs)

DSL boots with fluxbox and a fb X and even on my 486 33mhz laptop is quite usable (I use the 486 to monitor the big machines from bed and surf slashdot occasionally :)

DSL is also quite nice for doing chroot to a debian install without having to go thru the crap of loading floppies - read the howtos there (too long to get into in this post)

BTW, none of the machines I've used DSL on have more than 16mb ram - more helps, but it's very usable without them, as long as you aren't using modern browsers (ram-hungry) or things like Open Office. To boot DSL requires only 8 mb ram if you're willing to deal with a lot of HD swap. Installation is easy - there's a script in the image that is really easy to run thru, all you need to know is what partition it needs to be on. Oh, and it pretty much installs and runs itself. Give it a try. I'd be interested in hearing your experiences (no, I'm not affiliated, I just think that Damn Small Linux rocks!)

Hey, good luck, man - seriously. Don't have time to play like that anymore, and I kind of miss it. If you'd like some non-RTFM help, post back - and we'll figure out a contact. I can't promise FT replies but I'll damn sure help you out - I'd consider it payback for those who helped me learning this.

Cheers!
SB

I'm running Mozilla Foxfire on Luit Linux 0.2 now, a remaster of Damn Small Linux , a cut-down version of Knoppix. Since I am running off the cd, I doubt any virus could get into my box and do damage. Correct me if I am wrong.

Also, there is Damn Small Linux
It's got SciTE, a very useful editor.

Well, it only takes 5 minutes on knoppix or Damn Small Linux, but a full fledged distro like RHL 9 takes more than 5 minutes!

There are a lot with low hardware requeriments. Of the few I tried, Damn Small Linux should work with fewer resources even, and Morphix Light should work also, and is more comfortable for end users.

That wouldn't be Damn Small Linux would it? Seriously, I use it, and it works great on older pc's. The /knoppix folder is only 50 mb or so.
New version 0.6 just out this week.
I currently use 0.5.3.1, DSL is easy to set up to place your restore tarball on the hdd. After that, you can boot without the CD, just use a boot floppy. Very fast that way. I run MozillaFirebird on mine.

The rest of us get the 'fully crippled" version.
Now, if we can just get Dell to stop setting up their boxes with
partitions such as this one: /dev/hde1, and /dev/hde2, so a Knoppix live CD cannot find a /knoppix folder there if you decided to run it off
the hard drive (faster) than off the cdrom.
What's this, some sort of Dell/Microsoft plan to keep us live
CD people out? My Damn Small Linux cd, based on
knoppix has to run off the cdrom also, because of this.
Then there is the winmodem that ships with that $2300 box...
Too much "crippling" going on here.

Exactly. That's how Windows became so bloated, and Linux will be too. How about starting with a clean sheet of paper, so to speak, and designing it right to begin with. Getting your stuff to run on top of several castles worth of rubble is bloat. An example of something designed with a relatively clean sheet of paper is MozillaFirebird. (IMHO) It's all in one directory, so us Damn Small Linux users have a ball with it. The name of the game at DSL is "restore", and with Moz, we have it made.

Firebird 7 comes standard as a built-in wget installer (with flash 6) in Damn Small Linux.. I'm using it now.

I notice Debian GNU/Linux is at the top, probably due to it's alphabetical ranking, but we all know that was chosen for this list so Debian would be on top. Good thing, cause I'm running Damn Small Linux, which is based on Knoppix, which is based on Debian, or so we are told. Yes, I have tweaked it.

I carry two bootable BCDs in my wallet. Like you I use Damn Small which I think is the best general purpose/desktop mini-distribution.

LNX-BBC is also worth having. The Free Software Foundation prints this one on their membership cards.

It has a flexible build system for customising your own version of the distribution and contains a number of networking and hardware utilities which DSL doesn't out of the box.

If you don't want all that bulk of Knoppix, then try two of its derivatives:

1. Damn Small Linux, which is 50MB and fits on those business card CDs. Keep a few in your wallet, so you can pass them out to friends.

2. Flonix, which is 60MB and fits on those small CDs and also has another distro that fits on bootable USB Flash pen drives. I have a combination of DSL and Flonix on my 64MB keychain USB flash drive, along with DOS, and the Redhat network installer (all bootable from my syslinux menu). Talk about a useful keychain :)

It's fast and stable, and the scite editor included is way better than gnotepad for editing html pages for my web site. Right now, I am using the glinks web browser, which has to be seen to be believed. It is much better than dillo, but of course no match for Moz 7.

Big problem in moving my CD and stick around to various machines. Modem has to be reconfigured with #wvdialconf wvdial.conf, and of course you might not be able to get X to run.
One can start with "knoppix 2" to start in text mode and work up from there.

I installed on the HDD as I wanted more speed, and got a little tired of having the cdrom drive spin, although it's not really that bad, I just wanted more...

This setup runs almost as fast as my P4 2.8 1GB XP box, but not quite. It's not slow by any means.

One idea is to back up to a second memory stick (remove the original) then if your stick pulls a "mars lander" item on the flash memory, you still have your stuff.

I have my menu file(yes, I changed it) on the 'net at:
fluxbox_menu so you can see what this litttle distro has. I have not added anything but Moz 7 to it, yet. As you can see this setup is stable enough to make this post, using Slashdot's online "comment box", with the corrections, and additions one must make. There is no "paste" in glinks, that I could find, so I couldn't just write this in scite, and paste it here.

You could just do an custom ISO and add more packages I guess :)

There is a knoppix remastering called DamnSmallLinux - Designed to run on small CDs, but can be modified to boot from a USB key!
The distro runs FluxBox as the WM, it has a browser, email client, word processor, file mananger, instant messenger, picture viewer, image editing, spreadsheet and a lot more :) Oh, yeah, and it's 50 MB! :) How's that for light and portable?

> A 1G USB stick could be the sweet spot for having
> both apps, data, and (optionally) an entire OS.

Umm... I guess you haven't heard of Damn Small Linux, then... An OS in less than 50MB.

Customising it might be restricted to the realm of geeks for the moment, mind.

(Scroll up the page for a couple of links about booting from USB.)

Maybe since I'm an anonymous coward, I'm just gonna tack my request onto this comment:

Everyone list their best websites for finding used/older model laptops. I want to get an old laptop in order to install Damn Small Linux onto it...

Debian
Business rescue cd
Linux-BBC
RIP Linux
Damn Small Linux (50 meg!)

Not as much space on these as a full distro, and these are live cds, so basicly a mini-knoppix style thing. Might be worth looking into to have as a quick fix for a bad computer....

PS: the RIP in RIP Linux stands for "Recovery Is Possible"

You mean like Damn Small Linux ? That's a debian derivatives, but only 50MiB.

http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/ will guide you into fitting it on your usb key.

Good luck!

Check out Damns SmallLinux -- it uses Fluxbox and lite apps.

If you're looking for a 50 MB live Linux, try Damn Small Linux

Off the top of me head, I know of Knoppix, Morphix, Damn Small Linux, and Puppy Linux.
There are a few others, but I don't remember them off the top of my head.

With a flash card there you could have a couple of gigabytes of flash memory to boot an entire operating system off of, without any hard drive. That would improve both bootup speed, and cooling performance.

dman small is 50 MB. it is a pruned knoppix.

But i am not sure ho to boot it from the pendisk. i didnt manage to boot from my pendrive. (i have a asus p4pe Mobo).

loadlin (or linload?) should be able to boot it from real-mode dos.

If you are facing size restrictions (older, smaller hard drives) or wanting to work with smart-card-bootable systems, check out: Damn Small Linux which fits everything into less than 50 megabytes, as does the bootable business card distro.

You might want to check out Damn Small Linux.